“You’ve got a point,” David said.
“I’d like to begin by checking out all parties of three: two men and a woman.”
“Two men and a woman? Well, I don’t expect we have many of those. This is a big place, but I don’t think it’s the week for that sort of stuff,” David said, smiling. “Let me introduce you to Mrs. Aldelman. She’s in charge of reservations and runs the front desk. Sort of my right hand around here.”
“Fine.”
David buzzed the front.
“Can Mrs. Aldelman step in here a moment?”
“She’ll be right in, Mr. Oberman,” a thin, female voice said.
“Good.” David turned back to Barry. “Your family will be on the second floor of the old house. Actually, that place is more homelike, warmer. It’s where I was brought up.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. My father lives on the first floor. Retired, but he still sticks his nose into things from time to time,” David added. “You’re in room 214. It has a nice view.”
“Fine. That will make my wife happy,” Barry said. He turned as Mrs. Aldelman came into the office. Then he stood up.
“Mrs. Aldelman. I want you to meet Lieutenant Barry Wintraub of the New York Police. He’s here doing some unofficial police business at my request.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Gladys said. Her glasses were down on the bridge of her nose, and there was a smear of ink across her chin. Barry noted that all her fingers were stained at the tips.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d cooperate with him and give him whatever information he needs.”
“Right now?” she said, grimacing.
“No. He’ll settle in and see you after things quiet down.”
“Fine,” she said. She smiled quickly at Barry and turned completely to David. “We’re having a small problem with the Marxes. Mrs. Marx claims she specifically booked a second-floor room and we have her in a fifth-floor room.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I’ve booked all the second- and third-floor suites. She’s going to be calling you soon.”
“Okay, I’ll deal with it,” he said and smiled at Barry.
“I guess you have your work cut out for you,” Barry said. “I’ll leave you now and see you later.”
“Fine,” David said. Barry started for the back door. “Oh, and Lieutenant, …”
“Yes?”
“You’ve got your work cut out for you, too.”
Barry nodded. Mrs. Aldelman peered at him over her glasses. Then he left.
16
Nessim stood looking out the window of their room. From where they were located, it was possible to see down to the garbage truck entrance of the hotel where Hamid would be waiting to take them away after the walls came tumbling down. Including staff and guests, the New Prospect had a running population of nearly thirty-three hundred people. It required the services of a full-time sanitation crew and had about as much garbage in tonnage as a small village or town. The hotel had its own trucks that carried the refuse to the county dump.
The New Prospect was fenced in on all sides, but a highway ran alongside it on the east end. It was from this highway that people came up from New York. Across the highway, the hotel had its parking lots and a part of its golf courses. A constant line of cars was driven into the parking lot on check-in and check-out days. The regular traffic along the highway was continually interrupted. One of the New Prospect’s security men tried directing traffic around the guests’ cars. Nessim watched with some interest. Then he turned and looked at the closed suitcase near the bed. It carried fire and death.
Clea was in the bathroom, showering for dinner. It amused him to see how much she had been taken by the hotel. He himself had been surprised by its luxuriousness: thick, rich-looking carpeting along the lobby and up the stairways; expensive-looking chandeliers and fixtures; and large, sumptuous rooms. It was like a palace all right. They had penetrated someone’s kingdom.
What amazed him was how easy it was to enter the hotel carrying enough plastique to blow it up. The Middle East was a maze of security—searches, X-ray machines at airports, personnel hired simply to watch and look and study. That was a world of continuous pessimism. Everyone expected there’d be attempts to deal individuals death. But that was not true here.
The Jewish people at the New Prospect were as vulnerable as could be. It would be easy. What were they—arrogant or stupid? The world was being ripped apart by factions struggling until the bitter end and they frolicked about as if all was hunky-dory. The vessels and the tools of war would come out of the things these people said and did here, and yet they felt completely safe, apart from it all. Nessim thought, Do they think we are stupid perhaps? If so, they would change their minds in a few days.
He walked to the bathroom doorway and turned the knob slowly. Then he pushed the door open and confronted Clea, nude, drying herself. She turned and looked at him.
“Don’t dry yourself,” he said. “I want you wet.”
“But we’ll spoil the sheets.”
“I don’t care.” He smiled and she tossed her hair back. Then he retreated to the bed and stripped. She came out, beads of water on her arms and shoulders and breasts. He pulled back the covers and patted the bed beside him. She came to it and he kissed her wet skin, ran his lips over her nipples, sucking up the drops of water around them.
“Oh, Nessim.”
“It’s like a honeymoon,” he said and laughed. But there was more to it. The thoughts of death and violence always brought him to a pitch of intense excitement. There was something sexual in delivering death. He couldn’t explain it, but it excited him in an erotic way. He was going to manipulate people, turn them, spend them, and drive them into pain and agony. He always enjoyed this sense of power. It was often the same with his sex.
Clea moaned beneath him. She closed her eyes and opened her body to his touch. He felt between her legs, slid his fingers gently into her, massaging, touching, bringing her up to a pitch of intensity that had her moving her own body to the rhythms of his stroke.
He made love as hard and as determinedly as he had ever made love. Once, in the middle of it, she opened her eyes and stared up at him to see if he was really enjoying it. He seemed wild and violent. The look on his face must’ve frightened her some. She closed her eyes and turned her head. When it was finished, he turned over on his stomach and lay there, breathing hard. After a while, he felt her hand on his back.
“Nessim, are you all right?”
“Sure. Why?”
“You weren’t making love to me.”
He turned and looked at her, propping himself on an elbow. She looked worried.
“What? What do you mean?”
“You were doing something else, not making love.”
“You’re crazy. What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t talk silly,” he said, but he was embarrassed that she had seen through him so well. “C’mon,” he added, sitting up. “Let’s get dressed and walk around this place. We’ve got to be guests. I’m curious anyway.”
“Okay.”
“Remember now. If people ask, we’re from Israel. Jerusalem. We can talk about the new city.”
“What do you do again?”
“Irrigation engineer.”
“I’ll try to let you answer all the questions,” she said.
After they were dressed, they went to the lobby, walking through it down to the stores, looking at everything just the way any tourist would. They saw the indoor skating rink, went to the big glass floor that overlooked the indoor pool below, and then strolled through the game room. Clea played some computer tennis against Nessim and beat him once out of three times. They laughed, studied the pictures of famous entertainers and politicians set along the hallways, and made their way to t
he lounge. Music drew them inside.
“Dinner’s not until seven,” he said. “Let’s take a table over at the far end and have a drink.”
“Fine.”
They maneuvered their way through the crowd, into the darkness of the lounge. The band was much louder as they went deeper and deeper inside, but when they got to the far end, they found they could talk at a relatively normal volume. A waitress in a short skirt and bright red tank top came to them.
“Whiskey sour,” he said. He turned to Clea. She nodded. “Make it two.”
“On the rocks?”
“Yes.”
“Is Chaim Eban here yet?” Clea asked when the waitress left them.
“No. Two days more.”
“How … Where will you get him?”
“In the dining room,” he said.
She didn’t reply. She looked out at the crowd of laughing, loud people. He studied her face. There was such quiet beauty in it. Here they were, he thought, in the dark shadows, together, talking about killing. The people around them drank, listened to the loud music, pressed their bodies against each other, wore beautiful bright clothes, sang a song of life. They would all be dead in less than seventy-two hours. Those women with the low-cut dresses, those men with the rich suits—all alive and excited in their prime. They had come to this hotel for pleasure and they would find pain.
As he studied them though, he thought he detected some rather remarkable differences between these people and the people he made war against in the Middle East. These people looked softer, paler. It made him conscious of his own dark color and Clea’s too. Very few of them had the hardness about their eyes. A very funny thought came to him—these were domesticated Jews, provided for and spoiled. There was almost something degenerate about them. It occurred to him that he was in no way afraid of them. They would be no challenge. They didn’t even know he was in their midst. It nearly made him laugh aloud.
The drinks were served. He took out a cigarette and offered her one. The light danced against her eyes. She blew the smoke up into pink clouds.
“Still nervous?”
“Not so much yet. Maybe later,” she said cautiously.
“Don’t think about it. Think only about enjoying yourself. You’re a guest of the New Prospect,” he added, smiling. Then he turned and lifted his glass. When he brought it to his lips and looked out at the crowd again, he thought he saw a familiar face. A woman caught his attention at the bar. A few people covered her from his view. He struggled to get another glimpse.
“What is it?”
“I thought … someone. Can’t be,” he said, sitting back again.
“Yusuf looked so unhappy this morning.”
“He always looks unhappy. Believe me, he’s not so unhappy.”
“I don’t think he liked being left with Mr. and Mrs. Tandem. She makes him nervous.”
“Hamid’s there too. He can keep to himself. Listen,” Nessim said. “Late tonight I’ll be leaving the room. Don’t be concerned.”
“I expected it,” she said.
“Well, I …” People at the bar shifted their positions and the woman who had caught his attention before was now in view, but she had her back to him.
“What is it?”
The woman at the bar paid her bill and then turned to leave. He saw her face clearly and was sure. It was Brenda Casewell, the woman who had been with El Yacoub at the East Ninety-Third Street apartment. Why was she here?
“Nessim?”
“Nothing,” he said and took another drink of his whiskey sour to mask the anger in his face.
The last thing he wanted Clea to think was that something was not right.
17
After his family had checked in and was settled, Lieutenant Barry Wintraub took them for a tour of the hotel. He got as far as the lower lobby of the main building. There the hotel had a clown performing. About two hundred children were seated on the rug watching him go through his antics, which included some magic tricks. Shirley and Barry left the kids and continued on their own to look at the indoor pool. They stopped at the nightclub and watched the stagehands preparing for the evening’s entertainment. Then they moved on down to the stores and over the enclosed walkway that connected two different sections of the building to return to the kids.
All the while Barry considered the lethal possibilities. Given the assumption that some terrorist organization was planning to attack Chaim Eban, where would they do it? Where would they have their best chance? Was escape part of the plan or was this going to be another suicide bomber? Rabbi Kaufman had mentioned the fact that he thought the Arab organization had sent some of its top people to do this deed. If that were the case, they would probably not want to lose them.
Of course, Chaim Eban could be shot at from almost a hundred places while he moved through the building. Later on, when he met with the Israeli security and the man from the State Department, Barry would discuss placing people at advantageous positions in the lobbies and halls to prevent such an occurrence. He wondered what precautions, if any, were to be taken with Chaim Eban’s quarters.
“You know, Barry,” Shirley said, “I am good company, but I’m getting tired of talking to myself.”
“Huh?”
“I asked you three questions in a row and you walked on as though I wasn’t even here.”
“Oh. Sorry, I was thinking.”
“Figured that. Didn’t think you were hypnotized, although a while back there you were glued to the movements of a certain young lady’s rump.”
“Rump?”
“Don’t try to tell me you missed that, too. If she had those pants on any tighter, she’d have to have skin grafting.”
“Really?” he said, turning around.
“Forget it. Did you see about the babysitting service? I’d like to get away from our offspring tonight.”
“Right. I’ll see to it now. You wanna stay here with the kids or join me at the front desk?”
“I’ll watch the clown. Being with you sorta trained me for it.”
“Very funny,” he said and kissed her on the cheek. As he walked back, he studied people. It was going to be nearly impossible to spot anyone he could consider suspicious. What made him think he could? He conjured up a picture using the description Gitleman, the fish market owner, had given him of the young man. Then he thought about the blouse he had picked up in the Mandel apartment. He pictured a certain form and shape on the basis of it, but how does one go about imagining the female terrorist? He wondered. He should have spent more time talking to Carl Bradsand at the FBI office. When he got to the main desk, he found a young receptionist, all smiles. She wore a nametag that said, “Happy Holiday, I’m Mona Langer.”
“Hi, Mona. I’m interested in getting some babysitting service tonight.”
“Fine. Time?”
“Pardon me?”
“Time that you want the service?”
“Oh. Er … The show starts when?”
“First show will start at ten.”
“Good. 9:45.”
“Name and room number?”
“Barry Wintraub. I’m in the old building. 214.”
“Fine,” she said. “They’ll be a girl there about 9:45.”
“Is Mrs. Aldelman around?”
“I believe she’s in with Mr. Oberman. Let me check.”
She disappeared into the back office. Barry turned around and for a split second, his eyes met Nessim’s. He and Clea were just going into the lounge. Barry thought the girl was rather attractive, but other than that, he saw nothing unusual about them. Mrs. Aldelman stepped out of the inner office.
“Oh. Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I was wondering … I know you’ve been working hard, but I’d like to do some researching as soon as possible now. I’m going to take my family back to ou
r room, and then I’d like to come back and look at your check-ins.”
“Certainly. I might be able to give you a girl for an hour too, if you’d like.” Mrs. Aldelman seemed much more relaxed and pleasant, Barry thought.
“Wonderful.”
“I’ll be in the back when you’re ready,” she said.
He thanked her and went back to join Shirley and the kids. When they got to their room, the phone was ringing. It was David Oberman.
“I had occasion to speak to the Israeli ambassador a little while ago,” he said. “I described some of our situation up here and he told me that he would be sending someone up tomorrow. His name’s Trustman and he’s with Israeli security.”
“That’s good,” Barry said. “Pretty soon you’ll have more cops and the like up here than guests. I hope it’s not a waste of energy.”
“It doesn’t hurt to take these precautions. I’d rather not have any kind of incident in the hotel. From a purely selfish point of view, it would do a great deal of damage to what’s left of the hotel industry up here. We’re relatively free of that sort of business. People take vacations to escape the real world.”
“I understand.”
“And we do owe a special responsibility to Chaim Eban.”
“I’m going over to do some research at the reservations desk right now,” Barry said.
After he hung up, he helped Shirley coax the boys into the shower to clean them up for dinner. “Where are you running off to?” she asked as he scooped up his jacket and headed for the door.
“I’ve got a half an hour or so and figured I’d get some investigating done.”
“Just be sure you don’t investigate any of those tight pants women.”
“Right, Shirl,” he said and hurried out.
When he stepped onto the front porch of the old main house, Barry stopped to take in the view of the modern structure just across from it. Rooms were lit up as high as the twentieth floor. He had the feeling that he was back in the city, but the open space around the hotel building gave him the sense of freedom and abandon that so attracted the tired city dweller. He was, after all, in the country. The night sky, filled with stars now because of the early twilight, was open and somehow more alive. He was filled with a new sense of energy and importance.
The Terrorist's Holiday Page 12
